Interesting Discussion
The theme for the 12th and 13th grade English courses this semester is “The American South”. I couldn’t tell you how many times the teachers have asked me specific questions about the South “because you’re from the South”. Last time I checked, Saint Louis is not considered to be the South. Oh well. On Thursday I was working with a 12th grade Leistungskurs (the harder English class as opposed to the Grundkurs). I took 15 students out of the class for 45 minutes and the other 15 for the last 45 minutes. We talked about lynching and read a short text and listened to the song “Strange Fruit”. Nobody had read about lynching before, so they were pretty shocked to see that something like that existed in the US. I had really good discussions with both groups of students, and naturally the discussion shifted to comparing lynching to the actions of the Nazis during WW2. I was amazed that there was almost an even split amongst the 30 students: half thought the Holocaust was much worse and the other half thought lynching was worse. It was really the first open dialogue I’ve had about the Holocaust, and I posed some good questions that made them figure out how to back up their arguments. It didn’t really concern me which side they fell on, I just wanted them to be able to argue and defend without notes or anything. I felt like I was actually doing my job.
I am still trying new techniques to try to get the older students to participate more and ask questions. I gave a lecture on the American political system, and the printer was broken, so I couldn’t print out my graphics in order to make overheads. Made things difficult, and I knew they would have questions. I explicitly stated that if they have a question (vocabulary or simply not following what I was saying), that they could ask me at any time during the lesson. I could see in their faces that most of them were lost, yet nobody stopped me. I then stopped and asked them questions (explain the Judiciary’s check on the Executive), and nobody could answer them. I’m not sure if they comprehended what I was saying, and were just scared to make mistakes in front of me. If it isn’t that, then they simply weren’t following me, and that is problematic since everything I talked about will be on their test.
Going to be traveling the next two weekends, and then I will have about a month left. As Germans would say, “Die Zeit vergeht ganz schnell” which means time goes by quickly. Very true. The weather is finally warming up a bit, and now I just need to find a basketball court. More to come soon.
2 years ago